You Complicate Issues
by alicemayisbetter
Summary: Kurt is afraid of love and himself. Blaine doesn't know what he wants. Somehow, they'll try to muddle through. Romance, Humor, Angst. Klaine. Oneshot.


**Okay, I've been working on this for forever, so thank goodness it's done. I had a lot of fun with this, doing humor and romance and angst. There's a bit of swearing, but I didn't really want to take it up to T, just so you know. It switches from perspective to perspective a little without warning, also, so be aware of that. I disclaim that Glee and Kurt and Blaine aren't mine, and neither is _This Time_ by Katie Todd, which is my recommended listening for this fic and which I got the title from. I'll put the lyrics at the end. Please review and give me feedback, I'd really appreciate it.**

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><p>Kurt reached for his coffee just as Blaine reached for his; their hands touched and Kurt twitched a little. Blaine looked at him, about to say something, then decided against it. He noticed the circles under Kurt's eyes, started to say something, remembered nights up studying, and stopped. He saw skin somehow paler than usual, then remembered an incipient cold which may or may not have been Blaine's fault and didn't say anything. He saw just a bit too much cinnamon and way too much sugar, started to say something, stopped, then realized he didn't have an explanation for that and started again.<p>

"Kurt?" He looked at Blaine, a bit too sharp. "Is something wrong? You seem a bit off."

"Blaine…" Kurt twisted his hands around each other and looked down nervously. "I… god, this is awkward… I kind of sort of have a crush on you?" He was too apologetic and too high-pitched, his palms a little too sweaty and in this light his scarf was almost red instead of orange and it didn't go with his not-quite-uniform boots at all.

Blaine rubbed the back of his neck. "Kurt, I… I really care about you, but… I don't really see you that way." Blaine braced himself for _sadness_ and a distraught Kurt and possibly even (completely understandable) anger, which would be awful because seeing sad Kurt just broke his heart and made him want to make it all better.

Wait, what?

"_Oh_." Kurt exhaled sharply. "Yeah, okay, no problem. Say, do you want a sugar cookie? My treat, we can split it."

"I… yes?" Blaine, confused beyond all rational thought, managed to navigate the complex tides of coffee orders and actually sit down with Kurt. His mouth was a little too open, his blazer a little too blazer-y, his hair way too gelled and Kurt smiled at it.

"I'm sorry," Blaine said, and sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm just, uh, processing a bit."

"Oh. Well, it's not a big deal," Kurt said brightly.

"Hey!" Blaine's vocalization teetered deliriously on the edge of wounded. "Don't act like your emotions don't matter. Just because they're not returned…"

"It's fine, Blaine." Kurt waved a hand at him, casually. "It's not like I expected you to like me back."

Blaine was still confused, and said as much.

"Blaine." Kurt's voice was all maturity and concern and calm explanation. "I once managed to convince myself I had a chance with _Finn_. I'm awful at reading people and my wardrobe alone shows I'm actually incredibly bad at the whole functioning-normal-member-of- society thing. I would have been infinitely more surprised if you'd said yes. As long as you're not uncomfortable, I can figure out all the reasons it's stupid for me to like you, you can back off on the flirtiness to help me redefine normal human behavior, and we should be pretty okay within the month!"

"You seem to have put a lot of thought into this." Blaine's mouth was on autopilot as he tries to cope; he realized belatedly that it had been like that ever since Kurt first admitted his feelings and _hang on_, that was a mistake, that was a _terrible_ mistake, because had he given himself even a second to think he'd have realized it wasn't "no" so much as "maybe, let me think it over and get back to you on that" that he was trying to say.

"Yes, well, after your second straight-guy crush in a row you tend to wise up a little bit." Kurt smiled bitterly.

"Second? I only know about Finn."

"Oh, right. Toward the beginning of the school year Sam Evans joined… he's hot, even if he's a bottle blond with a disproportionately large mouth." Kurt quirked his own mouth ruefully.

"Wait. Sam in your glee club is a bottle blond?"

"Yes, of course he is. He was, like, the only guy I'd ever met who didn't try to ward me off with a cross or something, it was exciting. He ended up with Quinn though."

"Huh." Blaine mulled over this new development. Meanwhile somewhere in the background part of him screamed _what the hell is wrong with you you stupid ass just figure out how you feel already_ but if he thought about it he'd throw up on Kurt or something equally awful.

"Sam Evans was my roommate last year at Dalton. He moved away and we kind of lost touch."

"That explains a lot. He was remarkably lacking in homophobia, it was very refreshing."

"Uh…huh." Somewhere between walking in the Lima Bean and now, the conversation had run away without Blaine and not only could he not catch up with it, he was pretty sure he and it were on separate planes of existence.

"Yeah, I appear to be a bit of a pattern crusher." Kurt shook his head. "I should really come with a warning telling people not to be unusually nice or save me from incipient danger. It seems to cause this kind of thing."

Blaine realized he had no idea how to respond to that. He really had no idea how to respond to any of it.

"Okay, I think this conversation has been sufficiently awkward." Kurt's fingernails scratched lightly along the recycled-paper cup as he stood. "I'm going to go work on _Paradise_, okay? I'll just… I'll see you in Warbler practice, Blaine."

Kurt walked away, his walk a little more swaying than any other boy Blaine had ever seen, his shoulders set with a fragile kind of strength, and Blaine wondered if this was a new post-rejection thing or if Kurt was always like this and it had somehow managed to escape his notice until that moment. Blaine ran his hand over his face, almost shakily but not quite, and noticed as he did so that his watch said 7:53. He lurched haphazardly out of his seat—his scarf was caught on his chair—and grabbed his medium drip, leaving behind three empty sugar packets, none of which were his.

* * *

><p>Blaine looked at the clock and noted, once again, that it was still 9:37. It was astonishing how much teachers could, and probably will, fit into the last thirteen minutes of class—even on Wednesday, when all anyone thought about was snagging off-campus lunch passes. Blaine fidgeted with a black pen he was pretty sure he stole from Wes two weeks ago and never bothered to return. He looked down at his notes after assuring himself that the teacher was still managing to cram maximum Imperialism into every second and there were still about a million years of today to go. He noticed that his handwriting was a little to large, his penstrokes a little too hard, his paper too frayed from all the times he stuffed his notebook in his bag without closing it first. Oh, and he had to top doodling in the margins, because he couldn't really feel responsible and study-ish when there was a half a boy with wings in the corner, judging him with his extreme lack of artistic ability. Blaine had written <em>the way his hair falls in his eyes<em> right over an important bit about Ceuta and Melilla, and what was that supposed to mean, anyway? Kurt's hair never fell in anyone's eyes, least of all his own, so perfectly coiffed was it. Blaine enjoyed thinking about Kurt's hair, not to mention Kurt's eyes. Blaine tried to be analytical and failed magnificently, because it had felt so good to be teetering on the edge of something more, without expending the energy to define and work for it, that Blaine had never thought about what he was refusing to think about.

Analysis had never been more strange. Blaine desperately wished Kurt were around so that he could tell some joke only Blaine would find funny and then it would be another thing they both had. He wanted Kurt to say something about _Vogue_ so that Blaine could say something back and they could shut out the world around them and Wes and David's affable inadequacy in that department. He wanted Kurt to be looking at him and just him, for them to have inside jokes and for Kurt to compliment his glasses so Blaine could complement that gray sweater, and yes he meant both spellings of the word. The bell rang, because evidently emotional revelations were infinitely better at passing the time than anything the teacher could say about King Leopold II.

As Blaine stood he grabbed his phone, thanking maybe-God for the rule that let him use his cell in the third-floor hallway.

_Kurt, we need to talk. Lunchtime? Ill be in the 2d floor atrium, plz come. thx, blaine._

He silenced it again and slipped between and among the inevitable knot of freshmen, heading for French.

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><p>Somewhere between <em>Je me couche à neuf heures dix, mais je m'endors à onze heures si j'ai la chance <em>and _les oiseaux de même plumage s'assemblent sur la même rivage_, Blaine managed to extract his phone again. He shot off another text along roughly the same lines and almost immediately received a reply.

_I cant talk. Srry. Plz dont wait._

Blaine swallowed around the tightness in his throat and tried to figure out why _quand j'ai été petit_ was wrong.

* * *

><p>10:44 a.m.<p>

_Kurt, seriously, please talk to me._

_Blaine, seriously, I need to be alone._

_I just need to tell you something important._

_No. Stop texting me. I'm not talking. I'm sorry. Turning phone off now, need to focus on Marxism._

* * *

><p>Kurt showed up to Warblers practice fifteen minutes late. Wes, who was naturally wearing his (figurative) council hat and, after all, held the (literal) gavel, gave him the official mild reprimand and secretly resolved to have a long talk about this later. And there would be no accepting of bullshit "I got sick"-type excuses.<p>

* * *

><p>Okay, maybe there would be.<p>

* * *

><p>Blaine saw Kurt walking down the Language hall and ran to meet him, hoping to just get in a few words before—<p>

"Oh, Blainers!" Wes called.

Blaine turned away from Kurt, not a little reluctantly. "Yes, Wes, what is it?"

"_Well_," Wes jogged over and draped one arm over Blaine's shoulder, "I know I told you that I had an extra ticket to that concert thing, and would you like to go with me because David has a thing, and so on and so forth, _buut_ it turns out that I, too, have a _thing_ for that day. Specifically a family-obligation thing. So… I was thinking you could take Kurt instead, you know, because I'd hate for those tickets to just _go to waste_."

"I… sure. Thanks, Wes!" Blaine said, grinning. Blaine realized that this would be the perfect time to tell Kurt he liked him, since Kurt had made a point of not actually being anything close to alone with him, or in fact just _talking _to him, for couple of days or so since the incident. And Blaine really missed his coffee-shop time with Kurt—he was never sure what to do with all those nonfat mochas he kept ordering by accident.

"Okay, no fucking way, Wes Montgomery!" Kurt strode over to Wes angrily. "Give me your phone."

"What?"

"Do it!"

Wes quailed under the force of Kurt's bitch glare. "Okay, fine, don't get your panties"—Kurt glared even more, somehow—"uh, your _extremely manly man underwear_ in a twist." He dug his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Kurt, who scrolled through it and called someone in his address book. Blaine, meanwhile, made valiant efforts not to think about Kurt's panties or lack thereof.

"Hello, Mrs. Montgomery? This is Kurt Hummel, one of Wes's friends from Dalton. I know Wes said he has a family obligation this weekend, but a few friends and I were going to go to this concert, and we were really hoping—oh, thank you so much! Bye!" He hung up the phone and immediately dropped the cheery voice, practically snarling. "Your mom said you could go right away, I didn't have to persuade her or anything. And by the way, Blaine, are you really that dumb? He obviously did it on purpose to try to _get us together_." Blaine was absolutely flabbergasted, but before he could interject anything, Kurt turned back to Wes, who could only be described as cowering.

"How would you feel, Wes, if there was a girl who had some big creepy stalker crush on you and I felt like you two were meant to be together and tried to force you to go on dates with her until you suddenly liked her back? Hm? Blaine being gay doesn't mean he'll like me any more than you being straight guarantees you liking any random girl! Or you know what, bi—no, heteroflexi—okay, fine, I have no idea what the fuck you and David have going on. I know that you know that I like Blaine but you know what, I _told_ him, okay, I manned up and I told him I liked him and all that crap. He told me, very nicely, that he doesn't like me back. _Comprenez-vous?_ I am, for once, taking the moral route and separating myself from him until I can look at him and not want to kiss him"—he shot an apologetic look at Blaine—"and I am _not_ going to let you turn me _back_ into a creepy stalker. I know his _coffee order_, Wes! You need to let me get over this!"  
>"I know your coffee order too," Blaine interjected helpfully.<p>

"_Agh_!" Kurt threw his hands into the air. "What is wrong with you? It's like you _want _me to be creepy at you!" He stormed off.

Wes looked about as stunned as Blaine felt. He quickly pulled himself together and rounded on Blaine.

"What were you _thinking?_ I was so sure that you liked him! I told _Kurt_ you liked him! What's wrong with you? You sang flirty duets and drove three hours to make sure he was okay, I mean, what _even_, Blaine! And then you _turn him down_! You _asshat!_"

"Gah! Wes! Wes, stoppit." Blaine held his arms in front of his face defensively. "I was really, like, surprised, okay? And I'd just never thought about it one way or another, and he asked me if I liked him, and I said no, and then it was like oh wait actually I'm not sure, and now I think I _really really like him_ and he won't even talk to me!" Blaine was very aware how stupid that was, but he'd never pretended, even slightly, to be good at this kind of thing. Okay, maybe he'd pretended to Kurt. Just a little. That… might be part of the problem, actually. Huh.

"And you didn't tell him you like him? What are you, some kind of sadist?"

"No, he just won't let me _talk_ to him. Believe me, I've tried. He made me stop texting him, too—apparently he just deletes them without reading. He's very convinced that isolating himself entirely will get him over me."

"Well, it probably will." Wes looked thoughtful. "It's an interesting idea."

"I don't _want _it to work, though. I don't want him to stop liking me and I don't want him to not talk to me anymore, but he won't let me get near enough to tell him that. I don't know what to do!" Blaine looked defeated, absolutely miserable. Wes steeled himself, knowing that what was coming next would lead to his probable evisceration with Gucci pins, but he couldn't stand the pining anymore. And besides, Blaine would owe him forever.

"I'll go talk to him."

Blaine stumbled and nearly fell over.

"Really, Wes? Oh my god, thank you. What do you want in return? I swear I'll do it! I'll—I'll keep Jeff from stealing the gavel. I'll keep Evan out of the sheet music. _I'll stop playing Katy Perry in our dorm room!"_

Blaine stopped, aghast. "Oh god," he whispered.

"Do you know what this means?" Wes said, grabbing Blaine by the shoulders. "Do you realize what you just—"

"Oh, lord." Blaine swallowed. "I'm in love with Kurt Hummel, aren't I?"

"Yes. Yes, I think you are. I won't tell him that, don't worry. I—I have to go talk to him."

"Yes," Blaine said. "Please." He looked as if he'd been bludgeoned about the head with a large salmon.

"I'm going, I'm going!" Wes dashed off, feeling lightheaded and odd and wishing, more than he'd ever wished for anything, that David had never agreed to that stupid family trip to Paris so he could have someone to help him deal with the sudden onslaught of gay drama.

* * *

><p>Kurt was sitting on his bed, making some kind of small, angry noises, and Wes was beginning to rethink his whole plan and just wanted to send Blaine in here to deal with his own messes, Kurt ignoring him be damned.<p>

"Uh, Kurt?"

Kurt whipped around and looked at the black notebook he seemed to have been filling with angry writing before blushing and shoving it under his pillow.

"What do you _want_, Wes?"

"I—I just—well, first of all, I'm sorry,"

"You should be."

"Yes, that's why I'm _apologizing_, that usually implies that—oh, whatever, anyway, what'd you mean 'creepy stalker crush?'" Wes didn't know why he'd chosen that to start with, of all the weird little neuroses on everyone's part that that conversation had revealed. He was honestly curious, though, so he supposed it was as good as anything.

"Are you serious?" Kurt was incredulous. "I just got all fixated on him! I cover all my notebooks in little doodles with _Kurt+Blaine _on them and I memorize all these tiny details about him. I analyzed every single interaction we had trying to figure out if he liked me back. I stare at him all the time. He was talking to Jeff and leaning really close and whatever the other day and I wanted to peroxide Jeff's _face_! And they were just _talking_, and I _know_ Jeff and Nick are doing that weird friends-with-feelings thing that they do, but I still went completely psycho! And I really want to sing inappropriately romantic songs to him or just attack him with hugs or something, and I know it's weird and awful and ridiculous but I can't help it!"

"That's… Kurt, that's just called a crush."

Kurt laughed, hollow. "Not with me. I know what it leads to, Wes. I just get too into it and too into it and I see all these things in friendships that aren't actually there—that will _never_ actually be there—and I can't make myself back off. And it ends up with me doing something psychotic, like turning Finn's basement room into some kind of creepy gay boudoir, or singing a duet with myself in half a fringed white tuxedo, or following the person who poses the worst threat to my safety into a deserted locker room. That kind of thing." Kurt's shoulders shook in a twisted approximation of dry-eyed sobbing.

"I can't figure out how to back off or take no for an answer and I _have_ to keep away from Blaine, Wes, I have to, because I've already done something crazy because of my obsession with him and I was just lucky the only person who got hurt was me. You understand, don't you? I told him we could just be friends again, and I was friends with Sam and Finn is a great brother now, but—I can't. There's nothing like him being straight or related to me holding me back, just that he's pretty sure he doesn't like me, and I will _never be able to back off_ because I'll always be convinced that if I'm just a little _better_ or if I just conform a little more, he'll love me back.

"And it hurts, it fucking _hurts_, because I don't think I can ever have a normal relationship with someone because they'll go on one first date or just have a pleasant conversation with me and suddenly it's 'bam, Kurt Hummel is going to follow you around forever, doesn't that sound like a creepy fucking time?'"

Wes was absolutely wallowing in his inadequacy because he was _absolutely the wrong person_ to deal with this situation. So he offered his most pathetic, useless last-resort bit of advice.

"You need to talk to Blaine."

"What? Have you not been listening to _anything_ I said? If I talk to him, I'll probably do something awful like try to sexually assault him. I am not mentally equipped to deal with _any_ of this, Wes, and I feel really bad about dumping all this on you and you don't have to actually give me advice or anything. It's just that—well, I usually talk issues over with Blaine and that's not really an option right now."

Wes's original plan had been to just say _Blaine realized he was wrong and actually does like you back, please go make out with him so he stops being sad_ but it seemed like anything along those lines would only complicate the insanity. Besides which, how was he supposed to work that into the conversation?_ It's okay, Kurt, Blaine doesn't know you're psychotic and he's decided he likes you after all. Also, please see a therapist._

"I…think it's still an option."

Kurt was wide-eyed and incredulous by this point because his other options were waves of tears and screaming insanity and the quietest option, he'd found, tested best with focus groups. He couldn't bring himself to keep explaining to Wes why telling Blaine _any_ of this would be terrible. Blaine would want to fix it, you see, fix it the way he'd tried to fix Kurt's problem with Karofsky and his inability to fit in at Dalton and his (_oh god_) complete lack of sex appeal. Kurt supposed that was what a good mentor did, but if Kurt couldn't handle Blaine as a friend, then Blaine as a mentor—_now with new empty platitudes and condescending metaphor action, batteries not included_—Blaine as a mentor would absolutely make him insane. This insanity could manifest as violence, or perhaps as an explanation of all the ways Blaine likes his food; Kurt was pretty sure that assaulting Blaine, be it with fists or instructions about how to make sure Breadstix didn't put too much cheese on the rigatoni, would just lead to Kurt's humiliating descent from society's few remaining good graces.

"I can't, Wes. I just can't. He'd leave me behind entirely, and I really want to at least try and see if I can get him to still be friends with me once I've cured myself of this."

"He'll leave you behind now if he thinks you never want to speak to him again." Kurt winced.

"You don't even have to tell him anything, just let him talk _at_ you if nothing else and we'll see how it goes." Kurt nodded resignedly and Wes got up to leave. "And for the record, I don't think you're that unreasonable for reacting to crushes a little oddly. Have you ever even _met _anyone in a healthy gay relationship? How are you supposed to know how to deal? If you never hurt anyone, it's not really that bad."

"I gave Rachel a makeover once," Kurt muttered. "She had a black catsuit on. It probably scarred Finn for life."

Wes coughed out a surprised laugh. "That aside. You sure you're okay with talking to Blaine?"

"I'll have to eventually, I guess. And I only promised to let myself be talked at. Nothing more."

Wes nodded and stepped out, leaving Kurt to seriously consider hyperventilating. Kurt tried desperately to marshal his wildly panicky thoughts, repeating mentally that _Blaine will do his don't-want-to-lose-you-as-a-friend thing or whatever, I will say whatever need to to make him go away, and then I will figure out another plan of action_. Kurt liked that plan. It was a good plan, mostly because it required no thinking, and all of Kurt's mental faculties were focused on making sure that when Blaine turned up he didn't end up randomly shrieking "I'd like to run my fingers through your hair!" or something equally unnerving.

"Kurt?" The man of the hour himself was hovering in the doorway, looking more uncertain than Kurt had seen him in—well, ever, really.

"I just need to talk to you." Blaine came in very carefully and hovered by Kurt's bed. "Can I—can I sit down?"

"Yes, of course." Kurt smiled at him, wishing Blaine would just get it over with already. "What is it?"

"Well," Blaine started, "you know how you just kind of sprung the crush thing on me."

Kurt coughed. "Yes. Funnily enough, I do remember that."

Blaine made a face at him and Kurt swallowed a chuckle. "I was totally surprised and I'd just never thought about it. Like, ever. At all."

"Flattering," Kurt said drily. "You sure do know how to make a boy feel wanted."

"This is difficult enough without you being all sarcastic at it!"

"I have two modes, Blaine," Kurt said. "Sarcastic or sleeping."

Blaine laughed, the first genuine laugh Kurt had heard in a while—_for two days_, he remembered. "But since then, I've been thinking. And I've had a _lot_ of time to think, with all the empty spaces in my calendar when I used to hang out with you. I keep ordering you nonfat mochas before I think about what I'm doing. It's very annoying."

"Oh _no,_" Kurt gasped. "Are my emotions inconveniencing you? We can't have that, now can we?"

Blaine shook his head at Kurt. "You're lucky I love you," he muttered.

Blaine paused. He had the sudden sick feeling that he had done something terribly, terribly wrong. He slowly lifted his head to look at Kurt, whose face was suddenly, carefully, delicately blank.

"Blaine," Kurt said quietly. "Please tell me you meant that in a friendly way and are just doing your usual weirdly oblivious thing."

Blaine ignored the insult. "I could tell you that," he said, equally quiet, though he felt less _fragile _and more _trying not to startle a spooked deer_. "But I would be lying."

Kurt was silent for a moment. A long moment. "Is that what you wanted to tell me?"

"Yes."

Kurt swallowed, icy and trembling. "I can't cope."

Blaine didn't say anything. Kurt was too cold and too jagged, too much a glass razor's edge, his eyes too blazing and his skin too pale in the gray-white semi-winter sun.

"I can't cope, Blaine. I don't know what to say to that. I don't know what to do. I love you, I love you, I swear to god and everything I don't believe in that I love you, but it's not a good kind of love. It's like me, Blaine, and I'm bitchy and breakable and stubborn and jealous and possessive and kind of crazy. I don't get along with anyone who can't cope with me pushing and pushing and pushing to see when things will break. I pushed with Finn and I pushed with Sam and I pushed with you and you're pushing _back_, Blaine. That's why I didn't just like you, you know. Because I thought you might push back."

"I know." Blaine said. Kurt stared as he choked, swallowed roughly, and kept going. "I know you're like that, Kurt. I know and I don't care because I love you. I love that you're possessive and I love that you're breakable and I love that you're bitchy. I don't need you to be perfect to love you. If you were perfect you wouldn't be Kurt, and the imperfections only make you better. You went overboard with the Finn thing. I'm not going to lie and say you didn't. But you _learned_ from it. You didn't make the same mistake with Sam, and you didn't make it with me. And it's okay, because I'm broken just like you. We can—we can be broken together."

Kurt leaned into Blaine's offered embrace. Blaine pressed his lips against Kurt's hair as Kurt buried his face in Blaine's shoulder. Blaine could feel dampness spread along his back as Kurt cried, but Blaine didn't really care. He just needed to hold Kurt, and protect him against the world, because he knew someday Kurt would protect him back. Kurt was like that. Kurt had fire and ice together, and it dazzled Blaine more than it could ever terrify him, and they could keep each other grounded and sane and safe.

Finally, Kurt's racking sobs stopped, though they didn't change their positions. Blaine felt, more than heard, Kurt's voice.

"So do you like me back?"

Blaine smiled. "Yes. I do. We should go out for coffee."

He lifted Kurt's chin, and Kurt pressed his lips to Blaine's, and Kurt was too damp and too uncertain, his hands too cold and his mouth too warm, and Blaine loved every bit of it, and wouldn't have traded it for anything.

* * *

><p>It's time to come clean<br>And I don't wanna hurt you  
>Cause I have been there before<p>

You complicate issues  
>That aren't even issues<br>And I have been there before

And you roll right out of bed with that  
>Common people say you have it have it coming<br>So let's pick and choose our battles wisely  
>And let's get it right this time<p>

The past is what it is  
>And it's already broken<br>So why go there again?

You roll right out of bed with that  
>Common people say you have it have it coming<br>So let's pick and choose our battles wisely  
>And let's get it right this time<p> 


End file.
